Why are there two black boxes?

The black box is made up of two separate pieces of equipment: the flight data recorder (FDR) and a cockpit voice recorder (CVR). They are compulsory on any commercial flight or corporate jet, and are usually kept in the tail of an aircraft, where they are more likely to survive a crash.



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Black boxes are not black. They are bright yellow or orange. The bright colour is used to assist in locating the boxes after an accident. Before airlines made day-glow orange a standard colour for the flight recorders, some Boeings used a yellow sphere.

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Flight recorders are normally located near the aircraft's tail, as experience has shown that this area generally suffers the least damage during an accident. Flight recorders are designed to survive both high-speed impact and post-impact fire. They are, however, not invulnerable and are sometimes destroyed.

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However, after FDRs were mandated by the aviation industry in the 1960s, regulations stipulated that all flight recorders must be painted in 'international orange' – making them highly visible and easy to distinguish in the event of an incident.

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Passenger planes' black boxes are able to send signals under the sea for 90 days. The black boxes, weighing an average of 5 kilos, activated as soon as they interact with the water and start sending signals. So any team looking for the location of a plane crash can even find it under the sea.

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GPS and other tracking devices make it much easier to know where a plane is if it crashes over land. For that reason, the black box does not emit a signal and relies on it being discovered by investigators.

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Answer: If a flight data recorder is recovered from the water, it is submerged in fresh, clean water to prevent deposits such as salt or minerals from drying out within the device.

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